Oxygen Bar, 2005
Stainless steel, hardware, green plants, oxygen masks, flyers (fleet of 2).
The oxygen bar reproduces in miniature the beneficial cleansing and refreshing effects of city green spaces on the air we breathe. Its purpose was to draw a link between urban land use and public health, to initiate informal conversations, and to encourage public participation in local planning processes.
The oxygen bar was sponsored by Tim Collins and Reiko Goto with 3 Rivers/2nd Nature and the Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. It was implemented on the streets of Pittsburgh as part of a campaign to raise public awareness of the planned destruction of Hays Woods: 635 acres inside city limits that would be strip-mined and turned into a race-track and gambling casino. The Save Hays Woods Coalition, friends of Hays Woods, with the help of artists Tom and Connie Merriman, were successful in interrupting the development plan.
Documentation of "Oxygen Bar" was exhibited in "Groundworks" at the Regina Miller Gallery, Pittsburgh, October 2005. The carts themselves had a second life in our neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago where my partner and I wheeled them around to give away extra vegetables from our over-abundant garden ("White Girls with Green Stuff").